Peace Process on Life Support?

After nine months of intensive diplomacy, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks appear to be in a depressingly familiar place: on the brink of collapse. Failure could trigger more violence in an already unstable region.

The signs of trouble are clear. Secretary of State John Kerry, who’s been leading the peace effort, has steadily shrunk his ambitions. The initial goal of a final agreement by the end of April was abandoned long ago; backup plans for Israelis and Palestinians to reach a set of core principles that would be the basis of future negotiations may have been shelved as well.

The current focus is the decidedly small-bore goal of just trying to keep the two sides talking. To that end, Mr. Kerry canceled a trip to Italy on Wednesday to fly to Jordan to persuade the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to extend the negotiations beyond April 29.

When the two sides resumed the peace process in July, Israel promised to free 104 long-serving prisoners in four groups in exchange for a Palestinian vow to refrain from pressing the statehood issue in United Nations agencies and the International Criminal Court. But with talks bogged down, Israeli officials say they are worried that the Palestinians will pocket the prisoner releases and not negotiate seriously after that. After Israel ignored Saturday’s deadline for releasing the fourth group of prisoners, the Americans were still frantically trying to salvage the talks.

The fact that so much energy is being spent on prisoners suggests that little progress is being made on the core issues: defining borders for Israel and a Palestinian state, determining the future of Palestinian refugees, providing for Israel’s security and the future of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Arab leaders this week backed Mr. Abbas in declaring that they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has demanded, adding a new complication to peacemaking.

With the two sides beginning to lay more public blame on each other, American officials in recent weeks had become more pessimistic about the talks. On Friday, there was more upbeat talk among some Americans of “substantive progress,” and “positive momentum,” but it was unclear whether that signified sufficient forward movement to keep a real peace deal from foundering.

In any case, both Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas need to think seriously about whether they are prepared to let such an opportunity pass; they will surely be blamed for failure, and the consequences for their people could be dangerous.

If they cannot, or will not, agree on a framework for negotiations, the United States should put forward its own statement of principles, including setting boundaries along the prewar 1967 lines and endorsing Jerusalem as the capital of two states.